He had spectacles in his pocket, indeed.
“Have I pleased you with this tune, Wife? You never say, and a fellow is left to wonder without mercy.”
“I love y—it,” she said. “I simply love it.”
“I love it too.” Noah rested his cheek against her hair. “I’ll love it more when it’s the good-night waltz.”
An hour after the opening waltz, late arrivals were still coming down the stairs, and the evening showed every sign of being an unmitigated success. The neighbors were gracious, the gentlemen making their bows to the new duchess, and the ladies admiring the splendor of the ballroom and terraces. Through it all, Thea felt Noah’s hand in hers, his arm supporting her, or his fingers toying with her sash, her glove, or a lock of her hair.
Almost as if she and Noah were a loving couple, no scandals lurking in Thea’s past, no near occasions of violence having marred the evening. Noah hovered like a shadow of foreboding at Thea’s side, though if he went a mere five yards away to the punch bowl, her breath grew short, and her heart sped up.
The same miseries befell her when Lord Earnest Meecham Winters Dunholm stood before them, offering a terse greeting.
Why him, why now, and when would this awful night end?
Thea’s nemesis had aged twenty years in less than ten, and he looked more nervous than any family member ought, given the occasion. Those realizations slid away as Noah’s hand dropped from Thea’s side, the emotional equivalent of a door banging open, allowing a bitter cold emotional wind to obliterate the meager calm Thea had gathered as the evening wore on.
“If you’ve a minute, Anselm,” Lord Earnest—Uncle Meech—said, “I’d like to discuss a certain matter with you, er, privately.”
He’d bowed over Thea’s gloved hand upon his arrival, and Thea’s throat filled with bile.
“I will not leave my duchess’s side tonight, Uncle,” Noah said, the soul of proper manners. “The ball is in her honor, and you’d assured me of your regrets—though of course we’re pleased to include you as our guest.”
No, they were not.
“Yes, well, sorry for the confusion,” Lord Earnest replied, “but I’d truly like a minute of your time, Anselm.”
Thea saw the man’s nervousness and knew exactly what poison he’d spew if he got Noah alone. Her head hurt, her belly was queasy, her heart ached, and she’d had enough.
The Duchess of Anselm had finally, finally had enough.
“We’ll both join you in the library,” Thea said, slipping her arm through Noah’s.
Noah patted her knuckles. “You’re sure, my love?”
Gracious saints. She was Noah’s love, though he’d never called her that before. Thea raised her chin.
“I am sure, Anselm.”
“So be it,” Meech muttered. He held his peace until the library door was closed, then turned to face his host and hostess. “I bring you a message from our mutual acquaintance, er, Whitlow, Noah. Whitlow has picked up talk from a certain Mr. Hallowell, claiming he’ll attempt to right a wrong you did him, and your duchess will be the means by which he effects his revenge. Talk of a young man in his cups, possibly, but Whitlow says Hallowell’s a snake, and not to turn your back on him or leave your duchess without protection.”
“Whitlow?” Thea murmured. The name was familiar.
“A mutual acquaintance,” Meech said again. “Nothing more.”
A look passed between Noah and his uncle, while Thea tried to place the name.
Noah brought Thea’s hand to his lips. “May I share the developments of the evening with Meech, my dearest?”
My dearest?
“Developments?” Meech crossed to the sideboard. “I’m not sure I want to know of any developments.”
“Hallowell paid us a call,” Noah said, leaving Thea’s side to appropriate the decanter from his uncle’s grasp. “Duchess, libation for you?”
Meech’s presumption was thus subtly chastised. What was Noah up to?
“None for me,” Thea said.
“I won’t be so shy,” Meech said, accepting a drink from Noah.
Noah explained in a few pithy sentences what Hallowell had been about, threatening to ruin Thea with vicious gossip unless Noah forgave all the man’s debts. Noah managed this recitation without alluding to Thea’s past, and she’d never loved him more.
Meech tugged on his cravat, the result being that it remained askew. “I’m sorry, Duchess. I hope you’ll turn Hallowell over to the authorities.”
“You do?” Why would Meech expect Thea to pursue severe penalties for Hallowell’s bungled threats, but no consequences at all for the man who’d taken her virginity?
“Yes, well…” Meech stared at his drink.
Noah took the glass from his uncle’s hand and set it on the sideboard. “Something troubling you, my lord?”
“Nothing,” Meecham said. “How are the girls?”
“Your daughters are fine,” Noah said. “Being young ladies of discernment, they’ve started to call Thea Mama.”
An unexpected and bittersweet bit of news. “They have?” Thea asked, then the first part of Noah’s reply registered in her tired, anxious brain. “What do you mean, his daughters? They’re our daughters.”
“I checked on them,” Noah said, tugging off his white evening gloves and laying them beside Meecham’s half-empty glass. “While the Furies redid your hair, my ears rang with Mama-this and Mama-that, and when did Mama cosh him, and why didn’t Mama stab him dead?” Noah smiled at Thea sweetly. “Quite taken with you, they are.”
Was Noah quite taken with her? Would he remain taken with her when Meecham had said his piece?
“I was no kind of parent,” Meech said, perusing a bookshelf as if literary scholarship was his new passion. “You know that, Anselm. They were girls, little girls. I hadn’t a clue how to go on with them.”
Thea felt as if she’d had too much wine, or was coming down with an ailment that affected her balance.
“Noah?”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Noah said. “For now, you have my apologies, Duchess.”
“You haven’t any children?” Thea pressed.
Noah’s smile went from sweet to wicked. “Not yet. Perhaps soon.”
“I’ll just be going, then,” Meech said, striding off toward the door.
Yes, please. Leave with all haste and never return. Lord Earnest had acted silently mortified the morning after taking advantage of Thea; perhaps his shame was great enough to guarantee his silence.
“You shall not leave just yet, Meecham,” Noah said. “You’ll apologize to my duchess first, then take leave of your children. Thea has an excellent point. I’m guardian to those little girls, and they are legally ours, not yours. Then you’ll do as you said, and leave for an indefinite journey in the north, and perhaps points beyond.”
“He’ll what?” Thea glanced from uncle to nephew. From beyond the library came the sound of a hundred feet pounding on the ballroom floor in unison, and a twelve-piece orchestra lilting along to the strains of a happy reel.
Meech was being sent away—that was good—but not quite yet.
That was very bad. Fatigue and strained nerves had Thea sinking into Noah’s reading chair, a capacious seat angled near the fire.
“He knows, Duchess,” Meech said, hand on the door latch. “Somehow, your duke has parsed out the details, but it’s not what you think, Noah. Maybe not even what your duchess has told you.”
Thea had told Noah next to nothing. Now she wished that she’d told him she loved him—for she did.
“Then you tell me,” Noah said, coming to stand beside Thea’s chair. “My duchess should not be burdened with this retelling, for none of it was her fault.”
Thea comprehended Noah’s words on an intellectual level, but all her body knew was that he wasn’t touching her.
“May I sit?” Meech asked, turning loose of the door latch. “This isn’t a simple tale.”
“Thea?”
She was nominally the hostess, though did that matter?
“Please, do sit, both of you.”
Noah perched on the arm of Thea’s chair, and she wanted to weep.
“So unburden yourself, Meecham,” Noah said, “but if Her Grace tells you to hush, you shut your mouth mid-syllable, are we clear?”
Thea resisted the urge to lay her cheek against Noah’s thigh, for what was to come offered only cold comfort.
She’d have a chance to hear from the perpetrator the circumstances of the crime against her person. At the time, she’d medicated a foul headache and wine-soured stomach with a touch of the poppy. Her room had been in nearly complete darkness, and her memories were fogged by the drug, and by her own revulsion.
Now Thea would revisit the plain facts of her ruin, and the prospect was a backhanded relief.
A duchess did not cower before the truth, no matter how her heart might be breaking.
Meech took the couch, flipped out his evening tails, then linked his hands before him and kept his gaze on his hands.
“It was just another infernally tedious summer house party,” Meech began. “Stodgier than most, with the likes of Joanna Newcomer and Annabelle Handley on the guest list. An evening or two of whist with that pair, and my store of civilities was exhausted. Pemberton felt the same way, and so he went prowling, as he usually does.”
“And you do too,” Noah added. His hand settled on Thea’s shoulder, the warmth of his touch an endless comfort.
“Pemberton doesn’t misbehave as often as you’d think.” Meech ran another finger under his collar though the library had no fire, and the room was far from warm. “Not in recent years.”
Pemberton had been a guest at that dreadful house party. Thea recalled meeting him, for he and Lord Earnest Dunholm had been peas in a pod, twin specimens of blond, mature male charm, neither of whom Thea had seen as any threat.
She’d been so innocent, and so ignorant.
Meech went back to studying his hands. “Where there are dowagers and older ladies, though, there are companions, and those ladies range the gamut from bona fide spinsters to strumpets who haven’t been caught. I struck up a flirtation with such a one, a Violet Carter, though she’s going by Violette Cartier now, and it was likely from her Hallowell learned of things he shouldn’t.”
Thea’s hand went to her throat, for she hadn’t heard that name since leaving the house party, and still it had the power to unnerve her. Noah’s fingers glossed over Thea’s, and her upset receded.
“Miss Carter was a dreadful little baggage,” Meech said. “I didn’t know that then.”
“Go on,” Noah said, taking Thea’s hand in his, bowing to kiss her knuckles, and keeping hold of her fingers.
“I was bored witless,” Meech said, “and after the usual round of flirtations, I agreed to an assignation with this creature. She seemed exactly my sort—lively, knowledgeable, and without sentiment of any bothersome degree. We set a time, she gave me directions to her room, and that was supposed to be that.”
“She lied,” Thea said, closing her eyes as Noah’s thumb brushed over her knuckles. Violet Carter had lied to Meecham, and one woman’s mendacity had caused Thea years of nightmares.
Meecham yanked on his cravat again, as if it were too tight. “She gave me directions to her room, except her room was across the hall from the duchess’s. Miss Carter told me to use the door on the left, though her room lay to the right. Had I gone to the room she directed me to, I would have ended up not in her room, but in Her Grace’s.”
Thea did not want to be cast back into the role of the bewildered and ignorant young woman, and so she asked the next question.
“What do you mean, had you gone to the room she directed you to? Somebody came to my room, and you appeared guilty as mortal sin at breakfast.”
Meech looked that guilty now, also fearful. Thea had felt fearful in some blighted corner of her soul since that night.
“Go on,” she said, “and be quick about it. His Grace and I have a house full of guests.”
Among whom, Meech did not number.
“Pemberton overheard me arranging this assignation,” Meech said, “and as he and I occasionally did as younger men, he decided to step in. He fancied the girl, and didn’t think she was the type to take offense.”
“Dear God.” Thea unwrapped her fingers from Noah’s grip. “Pemberton was…in my room?” In her nightmares, in her very body. She leaned into Noah, wanting to weep, to throw things, to kill Pemberton slowly and painfully, and Violet Carter along with him.
“I’m afraid so,” Meech said. “Pemberton found me afterward, shaking so badly he about cast up his accounts. He’d been played for a fool by that Carter woman and by his own idiot idea of a joke on me. Both Joanna Newcomber and Annabelle Handley had complained in open company of Violet Carter’s flirtatiousness, and Pemmie never dreamed their companion would be the object of Miss Carter’s retaliation. He was sure somebody would call him out for his behavior. I nearly did.”
“Nearly?” Noah spat. “Your stupid old boy’s prank saw my wife violated, and you think it doesn’t merit redress?”
Violated. Noah said the ugly, honest word Thea had avoided even in her mind. To hear him speak that truth ought to have sent her into strong hysterics, but to her surprise, his accusation calmed some of her upset.
“Anselm…” Thea linked their hands again. “Please don’t raise your voice. I cannot—I think I’m relieved, if you must know. Sick, angry, and disgusted, but now at least I know. Nobody intended anything more than malicious mischief—very malicious mischief—such as would have resulted if I’d been seen turning a man away from my bedroom door.”
Thea knew who, she knew why, she knew in a way she hadn’t that none of it was her fault.
“For the love of God.” Noah pushed away from the chair. “My uncle confesses to being an accessory to your ill usage, and you’re relieved?”
“A duchess must deal with difficult truths sometimes,” Thea said as the damned reel finally came to a close, and a measure of quiet descended in the library.
Noah glared at his uncle and seemed to grow larger before Thea’s eyes. “You, my lord, engineered a situation others could use to wreak criminal havoc on a young lady’s virtue. What reparation are you prepared to make?”
“My daughters call her Mama,” Meech said, “and I will happily become this family’s remittance man if that’s what Lady Thea demands of me.”
A duchess also asserted her authority from time to time. The guests would be on hand for hours yet, the truth had been aired, and Thea needed to put distance between herself and Meech.
She got to her feet and brought Noah his gloves.
“I will not have two grown men bickering before me at this hour. May we get back to our guests? I cannot recall this Pemberton person’s appearance in any detail. I can assure you Violet Carter was an unpleasant, malcontented woman who took me into immediate and bitter dislike for the consideration shown me by my employers.”
“You want to get back to our guests?” Noah posed the question as if the words made no sense, neither did he don his evening gloves.
“I don’t want to,” Thea said, “but we’re enduring this entire ball to ensure there’ll be no gossip. If we’re closeted much longer with your uncle, there will be talk, and for no purpose. I cannot think, given what has been revealed here. I don’t know what to feel, toward whom I should be angry, or if it even changes anything to know these truths, as opposed to other truths. Supper will soon be over, and it’s late.”
Thea needed her husband, though. Of that, she was certain.
“My duchess has spoken,” Noah said, winging his arm at her.
She allowed herself one long moment to lean against him, to let a weight of anxiety and fear slide away, to take solace from the man she’d promised the rest of her life to.
Someday, someday in the future, matters between Thea and her husband would be all right. Maybe after five years
of stumbling and groping their way forward, maybe after adding more children to the nursery. Maybe more awkward discussions were needed, but someday, their marriage would come right.
Just as Thea knew, in that moment, they were not right at all.
* * *
“I didn’t know Lord Earnest Dunholm was your uncle Meech.”
Noah turned his tired, brave, amazing duchess under his arm, while their guests bowed and twirled along to the music beside them. “My dear, I can hardly recall the figures of the dance, much less attend to more revelations at the moment. Might we simply waltz?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Thea dipped gracefully, when Noah wanted to bellow until their infernally smiling neighbors, and confoundedly attentive family, and everlastingly helpful servants all waltzed themselves to perdition so he could be alone with his wife. She was holding up magnificently, while he, duke of all he surveyed, wanted to take his bullwhip to the idiot confined in his stables, the uncle swilling brandy in his library, and the greater idiot—safely traveling north—who’d invaded Thea’s room and her peace and her body all those years ago.
Idiots, all of them, and yet Noah had been an idiot too.
He’d never told Thea he cared for her, never assured her he’d stand by her, never given her any reason to trust he’d meant his vows, never given her reason to confide in him.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
Knowing now exactly what she’d suffered, he wanted to take his bullwhip to himself. How long would it be before she could tolerate him in her bed again? How long before they had more than two nominal daughters to parent together? How long before Pemberton’s or Meech’s name could come up in conversation without the both of them wanting to retch?
The music ended, and Noah threw ducal pretensions to the wind. He led Thea to the top of the steps and signaled the butler serving as herald. Etiquette, duty, and decorum could go to perdition, for Noah’s wife needed to get off her feet and into his bed.
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